Ok folks I'm going to address this because quite frankly it pisses me off. Sean Jordan, a very nice man from ZENtertainment, a site and a e-mail service I have loved for two years now has decided to publish a letter that basically calls me a "Sell Out". Now I addressed much of my feelings about ARMAGEDDON in my second review. It seems that Sean didn't read this review, instead it seems that he felt the need to question my ethics and posted the following letter to his mail out. I've never once not told you where I stood in regards to these items. I don't work on any other sites run by studios covertly. I don't go on trips paid by studios and not tell you about them, though technically, every trip I've gone on was paid for by an artist (ie Director, Writer or a Producer) not the studio. And everytime I wrote the review, I gave you a detailed description of the treatment I was given, and how that made me feel. Name one other critic or writer that does the same. I'm not going to attack Sean, because ultimately I don't want to wage 'wars' on the internet, but when my integrity is questioned, well it angers me a bit, and I like to set the record straight. So I will go point by point in the letter and address every point the writer makes. The letter will be in Italics, my comments will not. The first paragraph is from Sean Jordan.
I rarely print letters from readers, basically due to a lack of space I have available each issue, and here I go printing a letter sent not to ZEN, but AIN'T IT COOL NEWS. However, I've entertained so many gripes from so many of you on Harry Knowles' news and personal reviews that I had to share this open letter recently sent to him, which made its way to my in-box. A lot of us let everything slide with Harry's questionable hype of GODZILLA, but if he insists on saying he's presenting films "without the 'studio line' clouding our judgement," this should be known by one and all.
What should be known Sean? What FACT, what EVIDENCE is brought to the table in this letter, which is basically a difference of opinion letter. Do you hold there is one side, one ABSOLUTE opinion in regards to watching film, that there is a PERFECT opinion?
(And while I've never once said a thing to you readers I don't firmly believe, I should re-mention that I've occasionally freelanced for a film studio, but I insist it has in no way affected the way I've reported on their films, or others they might be in competition with.)
Well Sean, if you are going to put it so mysteriously, why don't you go ahead and say what film studio, which films, how much you were paid, have they ever asked you to change your opinion, and then of course we do only have your word that working for a film studio hasn't affected your coverage. I have never worked for a studio, yet you bring my opinions and honesty to task. How long have you worked and what sort of work would that be... promotions? That's a grey line. But I have met you, and I believe you to be an honest person.
SUBJECT: Harry Knowles Cries at Armageddon
Date: Tue, 30 Jun 1998
From: Valentine Xavier
To: harry@aint-it-cool-news.com
Harry,
You CRIED at "Armageddon," Harry?
Yes, both times. As have many of the readers that have written in with their comments about the film. Even Joe Hallenbeck in his review a month ago mentioned crying. Not like in Sophie's Choice, I didn't bawl like a baby, but I did have single tears roll down my fat cheeks.
One of these days, Harry, you're going to have to do the studly thing. You're going to have a take a hard look at a film that you've said you're going to like (based on the scripts), whose creators you have a relationship with, and to the premiere of which you've been flown free-of-charge-plus-perks.
You mean like ALIEN RESURRECTION? A film who's script I loved, from a director I loved, from a studio I love, from a franchise I love. One where I meet the stars, the execs, the top people? Why don't you read the Alien Resurrection World Premiere coverage, before you write something like this.
And....
One day you're going to have to watch one of these made-in-the-shade, pre-fab, right-up-Harry's-alley movies and compassionately SLAM IT. Because people here and there are starting to wonder about your integrity, Harry. Not me -- I'm not saying (or even thinking) this, but others are -- trust me.
Well, I'm glad you believe in me. But quite frankly when these 'others' begin gripping, point them to the ALIEN RESURRECTION world premiere. That film should've been a great film. In my opinion it was garbage, but some people loved it. Did they sell out? No, they loved the film. I don't question that. In fact I marvel at others' ability to love a film I hate, dislike or can't stand. That's what make film conversations fascinating, the differences. The fact some people believe Billy Wilder is God, while another believes that Hitchcock is, while others believe that Howard Hawks or John Huston or (Like me) Michael Curtiz. How dull would it be if we all believed the same thing?
Everyone has sympathies and allegiances. That's natural & human. But tears-for-"Armageddon"? Beyond the pale.
Is it so impossible for you to believe that? That you can't see that someone that loves films of this type, that is an Eagle Scout raised to salute a flag, that was brought up on Rockwellian images, that loves Frank Capra melodramas and John Woo action melodramas, that looks upon a beautiful sunset with a tear, that sheds a tear upon hearing of Stevie Ray Vaughn's helicopter crash, that stayed up for 16 hours straight crying,smiling and singing along with Gene Kelly's SINGING IN THE RAIN and BRIGADOON the day he died? A self-admitted rank sentimentalist that yearns for a world captured in the auburn rays of sunsets. Personally I can't imagine not being wrapped up in the film. Does this make you someone that is bought and paid for by Paramount and Dreamworks' DEEP IMPACT team? No, it makes you and I different.
If you had just said you liked, or even loved,"Armageddon" for the grab-ass machismo/Jerry Bruckheimer/Michael Bay/pre-packaged/high-testosterone/ high-adrenaline/machine-gun bullshit, fine. Whatever. But saying you cried at this thing is over the limit, man. That's it. You've done it. You've put your ass in a sling.
A sling huh? Well, gee my friend, I can agree that the film is a grab-ass Machismo Jerry Bruckheimer, Michael Bay high-testosterone high-adrenaline machine-gun edited film, but I can not call it pre-packaged bullshit. Why? Because I don't feel the film is bullshit. I don't think a film based on the dreams and the myth-making that goes into this film is false. I believe there are thousands out there that look or once looked upon the space program with the belief that a Buck Rogers/Flash Gordon style adventure film about sending a group of all around common men into space to fight impending doom for the planet, was what the space program was about. Let's face it, how many people entered the space program because of 2001, and how many went because TOM CORBETT SPACE CADET, BUCK ROGERS and FLASH GORDON told them? I'd be willing to bet that the people that are entering the Astronaut program today enter, because at some point, they were Luke Skywalker or Captain Kirk or even Alex Rogan who was defending the frontier against X'ur and the Codan armada. To me, that Music Man actor died and is reborn in THE LAST STARFIGHTER, I cried, you didn't, I'm sorry. Sorry it didn't touch the part of you that dreams, I'm sorry the film wasn't there for you. But for me it is, and for that I am not sorry. I'm happy as hell the film got to me, and it wasn't because I was in Florida, hell the temperature was 108, smoke was in the air, and the seats were uncomfortable, the snacks weren't good, the party food was bland, and the wine was bitter. In all the trip cost me $150 dollars, I should owe a studio a great review for costing me $150 to see a movie?
For a guy who knows his movies and knows his Lubitsch and his Orson Welles and Jacques Tourneur and his Sam Fuller and Martin Scorsese, you should know that the Michael Bay aesthetic -- wham-bam, anything for a high, cut-cut-cut, push-this-button, pull-that-crank -- is the closest thing we have to PURE EVIL in terms of motion-picture expressionism of the late '90s.
For someone who claims to know those same filmmakers, you do not know Sam Fuller. Fuller once said, "If the movie doesn't give me a hard on in the first five minutes it's no good" if that doesn't describe a Bruckheimer film, which is all about testosterone driven hard ons, well then I don't know what does. And to me the closest thing to PURE EVIL is a semi film literate person attempting to tell others how to think, how to feel and how to interpret what works on screen for everyone, as if there is some formula, some perfect way to make film great. To me the fast pace editting worked completely for me, it propelled the story, and it didn't give me a headache. Maybe it was all that speed reading training I got in High School, perhaps it's because I love flash editing like was used in the dinner scene in TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, the shower scene in PSYCHO, the Odessa Steps in POTEMPKIN. Perhaps it's because I was raised in the world of Sam Peckinpah, who at the time he was creating film was hated by critics because of his editing style as well as his violence. Does that make Bay a contemporary Peckinpah? No, he hasn't come close to making a Wild Bunch film yet.
I say this speaking as a quasi-atheist. I hate the religious right, and I find it tiresome when anyone brings up the notion of moral absolutes, but the content of "Armageddon" demands it -- it brings out the latent moralist in me.
It's not the cinematic technique, that's fine. It's the cloaked cynicism and rank DISHONESTY used in employing it.
"Armageddon" is about NOTHING but adrenaline, but it pretends to be about EVERYTHING -- it tries to get us going in the sappiest way imaginable by trotting out father-daughter love, patriotism, the proletariat mystique, doing the right thing, etc. It pretends to be about this stuff without acknowledging where it's really coming from, which is PURE, NON-HUMAN, CACKLING, IN-THE-CLAW-OF-SATAN OPPORTUNISM.
O-K.... What is wrong with the love a Father and a Daughter shares, what is wrong with patriotism as long as it doesn't blind one against the possibility that patriotism can be used as a manipulation to move masses into a propagandized state, the proletariat mystique (is that a line in FRITZ THE CAT?), and as for doing the right thing, I'm a staunch believer in the doing the right thing club. As an Eagle Scout I'm duty bound to do the right thing. What disturbs me is the high ground you are taking here. You pretend to know from where all of this is really coming from. And for a self confessed quasi-atheist, isn't the "IN-THE-CLAW-OF-SATAN" bit a bit over the top? And who is the 'satan' you speak of? Bruckheimer, Bay, Disney, the Studio System, Capitalism? And if you do believe one of these entities to be Satan, shouldn't you register your new religion somewhere and start a compound of some sort? Come on, if you are going to critique the film, myself or the studio system do so, but don't rush out with names. Is the film manipulative? Yes. Is the film manipulative in the hopes of capturing the audience and thus their money too? Yes. But isn't that the creed of Hollywood since the beginning? From the time when trailers decreed MR SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTION as, "THE MOST SIGNIFICANT FILM OF OUR TIMES" to STAR WARS which Lucas says he created to be a mythology for a time and a generation that no longer had myths to believe in. Then he creates the largest merchandising empire the world has ever seen. SO WHAT, I love that merchandise, I buy into that mythology. To me there is a man with no name that wanders the plains of Texas with snake eyes and a mean gun hand. To me Butch and Sundance still jump off cliffs and have adventures down south. To me lost causes are the only causes worth fighting for, and I don't laugh when Mr Stewart says it as his last bit of energy ebbs from his cracked lips.
How could I say this but at the same time love "Con Air"? "Con Air" was full of shit -- it was a total, cynical wank -- but it LET YOU KNOW every step of the way that it was TOTALLY about wanking, and it JOKED with you about it, nudging you in the ribs with this lie, that shot, Malkovich's performance, the convicts-speaking-like-literary-critics dialogue, Cusack's performance, etc. "Armageddon" tries to play it emotionally straight with the Ben-and-Liv love story, the Bruce-and-Liv angle, the Billy-Bob with-the-leg-braces scene, the Chick-and-his-young-son angle. This kind of sincerely-rendered insincerity is suffocating. It is anti-life, anti-art, anti-everything except on the level of pure wham-bam, cut-cut-cut energy, which I recognize is of course very lively in and of itself...but not over the stretch of 140-plus minutes.
Once again you are speaking of opinions. When I liked CON AIR, I had letters like yours that could not understand it, because that movie sucked so hard. I disagreed. At that point I had never met Jerry Bruckheimer, I had never met Michael Bay, but damn if that movie didn't tickle me somehow. Personally the way ARMAGEDDON plays it straight for me works. Patriotism isn't something to cackle at, neither is the end of the world. To me the film is pro-life, pro-art and delivers on a wham bam and emotional level. However it is not the greatest film ever, never said it was, but it did get to me. And I am taking my sister to it on Saturday along with her boyfriend. I ask you this, if... if you were on the Studio take, and you published a review that was dishonest, and deep down you really felt the movie was a piece of shit, would you be seeing that movie for a third time inside a week? NO, you would publish your review, and that would be that. You wouldn't look back, you wouldn't think twice, you would just look ahead to the next spoonfed flick on the silver platter. Me, I'm going to see Armageddon for a third time this Saturday, then I'm going to watch the fireworks on townlake, and listen to the symphony play the star spangled banner and the many works of John Phillip Sousa while bombs burst in air, then at midnight I will go to the Alamo Drafthouse, get a couple of pints of Guinness Stout and watch Peter Jackson subversive MEET THE FEEBLES (another film the critics loathe) and celebrate the freedoms I adore.
There has to be something STRAIGHT in a movie -- something that really touches you & doesn't fiddle-faddle around -- for it to work emotionally, cinematically, what-have-you. There has to be a CORE of sincerity lurking somewhere inside, or it doesn't work.
Agreed.
I say this as friend, Harry, when I say there are LIMITS as to what you can get away with as a movie reviewer.
You can't say the script for "Some Like It Hot" is flat and unimaginative.
because it is a great imaginative mountain of a work to you? To many? To me? But what about that person that hates tongue in cheek comedies, that feels Billy Wilder is over-rated. What should we do with this person, should we hang them? Obviously, because they have an independent thought, because they have a different perspective.
You can't say "I laughed at the noirish expressionism" in "Titanic."
You're damned straight I can't say that, because I don't believe there is a noirish expressionism in TITANIC. If you are talking about the Metropolis like machinery inside the engineering area of Titanic, then you are embodying that sequence with noir like qualities. You mean like, night for night shooting, the femme fatale, the double cross? The use of shadows, in a movie that is set on a boat that sunk at night? Now perhaps you could use the term 'Noirish Expressionism' when talking of Anton Furst's original Batman set designs, but to use the term 'Noirish Expressionism' and Titanic... well I guess it's your right, but I don't see it.
You can't say "I fell asleep" at,say, "The Manchurian Candidate" or "Twelve Angry Men."
What about if you turned on TNT at 3am in the morning after harvesting hay all day long and driving cattle. You take your boots off, undo your belt, eat a big meal, and you decide to catch something on the tube. After the first part of Manchurian Candidate you begin nodding off as the discussion shifts to Red Queens and triggers in such, but mentally you are just too tired to keep your eyes open and you doze off? Then the next day a friend asks you what you watched on tv last night, and you respond with, "I tried to watch a flick on TNT, but I fell asleep about halfway through Manchurian Candidate." Should this man be shot? Will he go blind? I don't know.
You can't say that "Lawrence of Arabia" is visually suffocating.
Actually I am physically capable of uttering that sentence without lightning striking me. I said it three times, and Michael Keaton didn't show up, I didn't become muscular in a big red superhero shirt with a lightning bolt on my chest and a tiny worm as my enemy. Of course it would take a good long time to try to justify saying that with any meaning. And ultimately the person who said it would be alone in his or her arguement.
And you can't say "Armageddon" made you cry. You just can't, Harry.
Not only can I say it, but I can type it. I can mean it, and I can say it proudly. Just as people like Joe Hallenbeck and Robogeek have said it. Both of whom are over the age of 14, in fact they are over the age of 20, and Robogeek is nigh ancient, you should have seen the field of candles that covered his cake last Friday. Even Paul, who runs Voices cried at ARMAGEDDON. If you doubt I cried, find Jessica Steen's agent, have that agent contact Jessica, and ask her how many times I removed my glass and wiped tears from my face. Ask her if my eyes were red, ask her if a publicist droped water on me from above in an attempt to make me believe that I had tears. That I was fed some sort of 'depressant' that made me emotionally unstable, did they grind up these depressants and sprinkle it like salt upon the popcorn? But I can tell you what I can't say. I can't say I've been dishonest in my reviews. You know why, because it isn't true. And I can't tell you that your feelings about the film are wrong, because to you, they are right. Just as those people that believe that THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST is a film that should be burnt, can't be convinced otherwise. Why, because to them, for whatever reason, they believe that. Not because they work for another studio that wanted to hurt the box office of that film, but because they, for whatever reason, believe that. We are talking about opinions, beliefs. "Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one" And if you didn't, you couldn't take a shit and you'd explode when you were full of it.
Plus, you didn't even address what everyone I've spoken to has mentioned, including at least one cast member, and at least one higher-up member of the production team. They all say this movie was cut too friggin' fast. Like Todd Mccarthy said (paraphrasing), watching it was like being in the proximity of a machine gun stuck in the firing position for 2 and 1/2 hours. To put it another way (in the words of a guy who's in a position to know), this film was "cut dishonestly....there's an honest way to cut something, wich is to choose those scenes and elements which advance a narrative or deepen a performance or expand upon a theme, and a dishonest way. This movie was FRAME-F***ED...every scene was tightened and frame-edited shorter and tighter until it couldn't breathe." Watching "Armageddon" is like being on a commuter train that refuses to stop at any of the stations, and just keeps going faster and faster and faster. You didn't even ADDRESS this issue, Harry -- the one everyone's complaining about.
Is Todd McCarthy a God to a quasi athiest like yourself? I mean if 'REAL' critics are your judge, then the critic for the equally honorable HOLLYWOOD REPORTER felt the film was cut to perfection. My friend Glen thought it was a bit too much, but not so much that it bothered him, Robogeek and Hallenbeck felt the film was nearly a perfect action film, Copernicus and Johnny Wad felt it was a piece of shit, and I... I thought the movie was a lot of fun, and yes, it made me tear up, those tears flowed at different points in the film. And the editing? I was surprised to find that even the fastest cut scenes were slower than the car chase sequence in THE ROCK, of course the same people hated that. Was there any sequence that had as many cuts and changes in angles than either the Shower Scene in Psycho or The dinner scene in Texas Chainsaw? I don't think so. To me, the editing would have been excessive if actors couldn't deliver a line without the camera moving off of them to a sunset, to a hummingbird and then back to a reaction shot of the person listening, then returning to the speaker. Instead Bay allowed each line to be completed before cutting away, at least to my perceptions. Of course Roger Ebert felt the movie began 65 million years ago, then to a guy with a telescope, then to beauracrats, then we meet Billy Bob, then we meet Bruce and crew. Personally I felt the movie started 65 million years ago, then to an astronaut in space and the shuttle, then to Billy Bob, then to the incident with the astronauts then to Billy Bob, then to the guy with the dog, the meteorite shower in New York, then to Beauracrats, then to Billy Bob, then to the President then Back to NASA solving the problem, then to Bruce and crew. Of course that's just what I perceived.
Well?
Well hope I answered some of your questions...
Valentine Xavier
Cool name.
Harry Knowles
